"This here garment Miss Holzmeyer shows me for twenty-eight dollars, Mr. Lapin," he said, "and with me and my wife here a dollar means to us like two dollars to most people, Mr. Lapin. So when I am seeing the precisely selfsame garment like this in Fine Brothers' for twenty-six dollars, but the border is from silk embroidery, a peacock's tail design, and the yoke is from gilt net yet, understand me, I got to say something—ain't it?"
Lapin paused in his progress toward his office and even as he did so Elkan's eyes strayed to a glass-covered showcase.
"Why, there is a garment just like Fine Brothers' model!" he exclaimed.
"Say, lookyhere!" Lapin demanded as he strode up to the showcase and pulled out the costume indicated by Elkan. "What are you trying to tell me? This here model is thirty-seven dollars and fifty cents; so, if you can get it for twenty-six at Fine Brothers', go ahead and do it!"
"But, Mr. Lapin," Elkan said, "that ain't no way for a buyer of a big concern like this to talk. I am telling you, so sure as you are standing there and I should never move from this spot, the identical selfsame style Fine Brothers got it for twenty-six dollars. I know it, Mr. Lapin, because we are making up that garment in our factory yet, and Fine Brothers takes from us six of that model at eighteen-fifty apiece."
At this unguarded disclosure Lapin's face grew crimson with rage.
"You are making it up in your factory!" he cried. "Why, you dirty faker you, what the devil you are coming round here bluffing that you want to buy a dress for your wife for?"
Elkan broke into a cold perspiration and looked round for Mrs. Feinermann, the substantial evidence of his marital state; but at the very beginning of Max Lapin's indignant outburst she had discreetly taken the first stairway to the right.
"Bring that woman back here!" Max roared. Miss Holzmeyer made a dash for the stairway, and before Elkan had time to formulate even a tentative plan of escape she had returned with her quarry.
"What do you want from me?" Mrs. Feinermann gasped. Her hat was awry, and what had once been a modish pompadour was toppled to one side and shed hairpins with every palsied nod of her head. "I ain't done nothing!" she protested.